Thank God We Spoke Spanish!

When Penny and I found out that Blink 182 was going to be performing at the Fila Forum in Milan, we ran out and bought tickets. Going to a rock concert in a huge venue in a foreign country was going to be a blast!! And I was going to get my otherwise shy roomie out of the house and maybe rockstar her up a little. I couldn't wait! But, two days before the concert, Penny booked a job and had to fly to the South of France, so she generously offered me her ticket and told me to give it to Jean-Paul so I wouldn't have to miss it or go by myself. JP was as excited as I was to go, we both liked the band and had a favorite song from our Miami days that to this day always reminds me of the good times we had together.

The night before the concert JP took me to Antlantique with 8 of his roommates. There I was, little me, with an entourage of eight beautiful boys. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night! Atlantique was a "cafe" that served free buffet lunches to models during the day and at night was an over the top nightclub that indulged in a little too much Europop, but when you are with good people and libations are free flowing , the music, the venue, and everything else matters not. This was one of my first nights out on the town in Milan with my new crew, and these boys could party like the best of them treating me like one of them and not just a hanger-on or some fragile girlie girl. I can't imagine how bored and lonely things would have been for me my first few months in Milan had JP not been there at the same time and introduced me to his roommates.

So...back to the Blink 182 concert.....JP and I boarded the bus that would take us to the outskirts of Milan where the Fila Forum was situated. The bus was full of Italian youth going to watch the concert as well....so JP and I decided that instead of seeming obviously American we would stick to speaking solely in Spanish (he is from Puerto Rico). And thank God we did. Nobody looked at us twice, they must ahve assumed we were from Spain. Thank God.

During the show the band got incredible accolades from the crowd, they sounded amazing, adrenaline was pumping and so was the sound system. Fila Forum was fit to burst full of concert-goers and JP and I were loving the fact that we spoke something other than English. It was already pretty obvious that we were models....we just didn't really want to branded with the Stars & Stripes in this huge crowd. See, anti-American sentiments have existed abroad for a while.....much as I would love to blame it on the jackass that is our current President. When I was studying in Austria while in college we were warned by our professors to always say we were Canadian when asked where we were from. As a matter of fact, during the entire concert, the guys in the band would make quips and throw out random jokes, none of which were laughed at, and I am assuming it was due to the fact that the punchlines were lost in translation. Finally realizing that their witicisms were getting nothing out of the crowd they all flipped the bird and yelled out "F***K America!!" at which time EVERYONE in the crowd cheered as if they were told that they were all going to walk out of the Forum with a million dollars in their pocket. It was disturbing. I can't imagine what it must be like now......I think I'd be walking around with the Canadian maple leaf tattooed to my forehead just to keep my anonymity. So yeah, I was ever so grateful that day that my mom was so adamant about speaking to me only in Spanish as I was growing up. !Gracias mami!

So the concert rocked. JP and I left before the last song in order to get a spot on one of the busses back into town and made it to C-1 in time to meet up with everyone for another night out painting Milan a brilliant shade of rosso.